Lakeland & NorQuest partner with project in Tanzania

New partnership between Lakeland College, NorQuest College and the Vocational Education and Training Centre in Tanzania.

Creating opportunities for disadvantaged learners in Tanzania to access pre-technology training is the focus of a new partnership between Lakeland College, NorQuest College and the Vocational Education and Training Centre in Tanzania.

Four representatives from Lakeland and NorQuest will be in Tanzania in March to begin the three-year project which is part of Colleges and Institutes Canada’s (CICan) Improving Skills Training for Employment Program (ISTEP) in the African country. ISTEP is funded by the Government of Canada.

“NorQuest College is proud to partner with Lakeland and ISTEP on this important mission,” says Joan Hertz, Norquest’s vice president of external affairs. “Our history of providing integrated training programs for foundational (literacy) learners makes us a true fit. We look forward to our role in providing input into the development of infrastructure and programming that will support Tanzanian adults with barriers, giving them access to post-secondary programming and ultimately transition to the workforce.”

Work begins March 16-18 with a Labour Market Information orientation and Partnership Learning Day sessions. From March 19 -25, the Canadian colleges, working in close collaboration with the Tanzanian partners, will commence an inception mission which will focus primarily on creating a project implementation work plan and budget development for the three-year project, said Lakeland’s Joseph Unufegan, project coordinator. He will be joined on the inception mission by Lakeland’s Michael Crowe, vice president, academic, and NorQuest’s Elaine McPhee, chair, literacy & essential skills and Nancy Thornton, strategic integration consultant.

Crowe is pleased that Lakeland, the lead Canadian college in the project, is working with NorQuest College.

“Lakeland is very experienced in providing college preparation courses and trades and technology training while one of NorQuest’s strengths is in pre-technology programing. Together we have the expertise to create a very successful program and increase access to training for the people of Tanzania,” he says.

March 1, 2016